Sunday, May 15, 2011

Rogers Sportsnet: Now with fewer sports!

Canadians like hockey, and Canadians love Game 7s. Canadians love the occasional junior hockey matchup, gain casual interest in the Memorial Cup, turn out to sports bars in droves to watch World Junior games, but Rogers Sportsnet doesn't give a shit.

Nope. If you're an average Canadian Joe Sports Fan, you probably have a digital cable package with Sportsnet One and all the Sportsnet regional networks. On my dial, I'll have Sportsnets Pacific, West, Ontario, East, HD, One, and Vancouver Hockey HD. That is seven channels.

But, on those seven channels, five are showing baseball, another is showing cycling, and one is showing dead-air. What the fuck? You have an easy enough time putting people off your network by hiring enablers,misogynists and trolls to serve as on-air talent. There's a reason that, despite being technically better at breaking news at the trade deadline, that nobody bothered to tune into Nick Kypreos and decided to watch Those Fuckers at TSN instead.

A gripe with Sportsnet is that it has long been a channel more interested in sucking up to team executives than it has been with showing sports--the thing operates as an extended public relations branch for the Blue Jays, after all. I'm sure a lot of people wanted to watch a Game 7, while flipping between that and the Blue Jays game and cycling, and not dead air, but that's just me.

None of this matters to Sportsnet and their drooling executives, who, in a timeslot where they'd be competing with lacrosse, NASCAR, and the first quarter of an NBA game, chose to turn a blind eye to their own TV deal.

The positive from this? The CHL will, at some point, reconsider their contract with Rogers (if they don't, they should) and we'll be spared of Peter Loubardias today, or commercials where the home team is referred to as "we".